From stenographic records not revised by the speaker. The original
stenographic records for the two lessons in Prague were not preserved, nor were
the blackboard drawings.

Translated by Frank Thomas Smith

Prague, April 3, 1924

My dear
friends,

The day
before yesterday we considered the first part of what can be called the
encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold. I said about this encounter that
it must be taken with the utmost earnestness. For it should be clear that as
long as we are unable to develop the feelings related to what has been
disclosed, we will not be able to attain true knowledge. We may think that a
certain knowledge about the transition to the spiritual world is attainable
without these shattering impressions of self-knowledge. But what we can attain
without such impressions is not real knowledge. Everything accessible to us
through the senses, as well as what we can achieve by means of normal thinking,
can at most supply knowledge of what is outside the human being, but not about
the human being as such. For the human being is of a super-sensible nature in
his whole being. And what we observe by means of the senses is merely the
exterior image of the human being. So that whenever you meet another person, my
dear friends, you should have this feeling: what I encounter here is basically
only the image of the person's true essence. For the true essence of the person
is enormously all-embracing. And we only get an impression of the true essence of
the person when we seek to clarify things which at first seem simple.

Just think,
my dear sisters and brothers, that certain sicknesses in man must be fought by
what is called poison. An encompassing, marvelous puzzle lies in this simple
fact. Why must poison be administered to a person in order for him to be
relieved of certain illnesses? What is poison? Let us ask the lovely-looking
deadly nightshade belladonna, let us ask such a strange being what it actually
is, my dear friends!

Let us
observe the wide world of colored plants which we enjoy eating without harm.
These plants thrive under normal sunlight with the spirit that lives in
sunlight. Just as we have a body which is thoroughly spiritualized, everything
physical, including sunlight, is also thoroughly spiritualized. But plants –
the ones that do us no harm when we eat them - only absorb the etheric forces.
At the moment when the plant absorbs an astral force – which otherwise hovers
over the plant like mist – it becomes poisonous. Belladonna sucks astral force
into its fruit and thus becomes a poison.

What does
all this mean anyway? When we ingest belladonna, we are also ingesting the
plant's astrality. We already have astrality in us, for we also have an astral
body, that is, we have within us something that continually produces poison.
And the I is more poison producing than the astral body.

Therefore we
can also say: the physical and etheric bodies are constructive. But if only the
physical and etheric bodies were active in us, we would be permanently
unconscious. If the budding and sprouting forces had the upper hand we would be
unconscious. We are conscious because the astral body and the I-organization
deconstruct in us. Due to the physical and etheric elements being deconstructed
by the astral body and the I, there is room in us for spirit processes. If
there were no continuous deconstruction going on in us, we would have nothing
of a spiritual nature. If, however, the astral body and the I are too weak to
deconstruct sufficiently, tumors appear in the physical and etheric bodies. And
given that our astral body and I are too weak, in certain cases we must support
the weak astral body and the I with poisonous substances from without, which
deconstruct what the astral body and the I could not.

What does
the physician do in such cases? He says to himself: In this ill person the
spirit has become weak; the astral body and the I deconstruct too little. I
must request outside help so that more can be deconstructed. So we look for the
plants that are more spiritual than the others; for the poisonous plants are
poisonous simply because they are more spiritual than the others. You can see
from this which mysteries exist with regard to the human being and his
relationship to nature, and that only when we approach the spirit are these
mysteries revealed.

You can
sense, from what I already said, that to learn the secrets of the spirit is
something uncanny; because one learns about a creative spiritual element which,
however, is destructive for the physical world. And we can only understand the
spirit in its reality if we seek it where it manifests itself in the physical
world through destruction. At the moment we approach the threshold of the
spiritual world, we realize that we become thoroughly acquainted there with the
forces of deconstruction. And no one who wishes to not meet with these
forces can truly enter the spiritual world.

So do you
see, my dear sisters and brothers, how it is with physical human beings on the
earth? Yes, it is the case that because their physical organism – only the
physical organism – is a whole, thinking, feeling and willing is also a whole.
You cannot think without a certain willing being involved. Even in the process
of developing a thought, a certain amount of willing is involved. You cannot
will without also thinking. You cannot feel without also thinking. In normal
consciousness thinking, feeling and willing are connected to each other. When
we say: we are thinking, then we are mostly thinking, and feeling remains
somewhat in the unconscious, and willing completely so. When we say: we feel,
then we are merely mostly feeling, and thinking and willing remain weak. But
whenever the soul is stimulated, thinking, feeling and willing are bound
together.

By being
bound together, however, means that each of these three – thinking, feeling and
willing – is weaker than in its own original state. Because of this, our
thinking is not strengthened, but weakened by the will. Our will is not
strengthened by thinking, but weakened. Our feeling is not strengthened by
thinking, but weakened.

If, for one
moment, we were to only think within the physical body without the force of
willing and of feeling, as it exists in the universe, in that moment, thinking
completely without the force of feeling and will, in that moment we would be
physically paralyzed.

If, also for
one moment, as physical beings we were to feel without thinking and willing, we
would suffer from cramping attacks, because feeling is something very much
alive.

If, also for
a moment, as physical beings we were to only will without thinking, we would be
consumed in fiery fever.

But before
we descended through birth, through conception, into physical-sensory
existence, our thinking, feeling and willing each stood for itself. There,
however, our environment was the spiritual world: we were able to tolerate it
there. But in order to achieve the necessary knowledge, an inner sense must be
attained about what it's like when we have separated our being into thinking,
feeling and willing.

A great,
meaningful moment occurs when crossing the threshold into the spiritual world
we meet with the souls of people who have died. At that moment we must be
so prepared that in the deepest part of our being, in our hearts, the words
say: They are the truly living! We say it when we truly enter the spiritual
world: They are the truly living! For in them thinking lives above all.

Yes, this
thinking begins to live once we pass through the gate of death. Yes, this
thinking had lived there before we descended to earthly life. And we only reach
thinking in earthly life correctly when we say to ourselves: I realize that I
am seeing a corpse before me, a soulless corpse. It can only be the remnant of
a living person. A corpse cannot exist on its own. It is a physical being, but
not one with its own capacity for life; it points to the life that preceded it.

When my
thinking unfolds in me, I think as an earthling thinks, which means as a
corpse. All earthly thinking is a corpse, the corpse of what thinking was before we descended to our earthly existence. And our physical
body is the coffin into which our thinking is laid when we descend to the physical-sensory
world.

Without
becoming incompatible with earthly life, without losing the correct
relationship with earthly life, we must be able to say in all honesty and with
complete confidence: as a physical earthling you are a coffin for your thinking,
for in the moment that you descended from the spiritual world to the sensory
world, thinking died and became the corpse of the living thinking which resided
in you before you descended to earthly existence.

Your will is
also not alive. It will be alive once you pass through the gate of death. Will
is seed, thinking is corpse. The will is the embryo of what arises in us when
we cross the gate of death.

What I have
just said must be clear to the esotericist. Then he will have an inkling of how
the soul-life of a person is transformed when he really wants to enter the
world of knowledge. And he can only enter once he defeats the three beasts
which I spoke of last time, and which the meditation which I gave points to. (I
will give you that meditation after this lesson, because I didn't write it on
the blackboard last time. So I'll write it on the blackboard and you can copy
it.) But today we want to look back upon how our willing, our feeling and our
thinking appear to us in images, in the imagination, through these three beasts
when our inner life is manifested in the outer world, with which we are
inwardly connected.

Therefore,
the person who approaches the esoteric path must at least begin to separate
thinking, feeling and willing. There is no other way to knowledge. And
protection from the dangers to which he is subjected in the separation of
thinking, feeling and willing is provided by Anthroposophy if he honestly
accepts what Anthroposophy offers.

Anthroposophy
forms thoughts in such a way that we are strengthened for super-sensible
knowledge. Even if we only receive and accept information about the
super-sensible world, we become strong. Thinking becomes stronger if we use it
to understand the super-sensible world.

What then is
the condition of those who do not want to approach the super-sensible world,
who don't want to know anything about anthroposophical spiritual science? Their
condition is that their brains cannot keep up with their etheric bodies.
Immediately, as they fill their brains with thoughts given by Anthroposophy,
their etheric bodies run out of their heads, out of their brains; then only
what the physical organism can think remains. From a more elevated viewpoint,
one can only pity those for whom the anthroposophical conception of the world
is inaccessible.

On the other
hand, my dear sisters and brothers, the more thinking, feeling and willing
become independent through continuous anthroposophical study, the more they
connect us in the right way to the forces of the world. Therefore, we must
orient our soul-forces so that we can find the way for thinking, feeling and
willing to enter the spiritual world in the right way.

Another
admonition – in addition to the one given in the previous lesson – another
admonition by the Guardian of the Threshold relates to how we should orient
thinking, feeling and willing in order to enter the spiritual world in the
right way. We must be clear as to the nature of thinking, feeling and willing
in order to understand what the Guardian of the Threshold is saying.

The Guardian
of the Threshold explains how all the thinking we do with normal consciousness
in the physical body is like a corpse, that is, a semblance. This thinking is
a semblance of the world, as a corpse is a semblance of the living, but no
longer living itself. Our real self is not in this thinking we do in normal
life in the physical body; it is not manifested in this thinking, just as the
living is not manifested in a corpse. But as soon as we have the courage to
say: Yes, the thinking that you do in the physical body from morning till night
is only a semblance; I will recognize it as a semblance, and it will become ever
clearer to us that the physical body gives us a thinking which is only a dead
semblance; the etheric body gives us a thinking which rises above semblance.

Whoever
feels that earthly thinking is only semblance, is only the corpse of previous
spiritual thinking, gradually feels himself to be an etheric being.

Then we
gradually become aware that the spirit, which is hidden in normal
consciousness, is within us. We can only approach this spirit if, at the
moment we realize the illusory nature of thinking, when thinking dies for our
consciousness so to speak, if at that moment we begin to revere the spiritual
etheric entity that emerges in us as etheric body.

Yes, my dear
sisters and brothers, when we observe the plants, the stones, the animals,
even when we observe the physical man, they don't withdraw from us if we remain
dry and somber and are thus unable to revere nature. But all this changes when
we stand before the spiritual world: the etheric world immediately withdraws
from the human being if he cannot revere it. At the moment when I can say to
myself that thinking is semblance and I want to immerse myself in this semblance,
I must begin to revere this etheric being.

Therefore
the Guardian of the Threshold speaks the following words for thinking's
self-awareness:

[written on
the blackboard:]

See in yourself the weaving thoughts:

Cosmic semblances confront you,

Selfhood as such hides from you;

Plunge beneath the semblances:

Etheric essence flows in you;

Selfhood as such should revere the

Guiding beings of
your spirit.

That is the Guardian of the Threshold' earnest
warning concerning our attitude towards thinking. We especially emphasize the
words “revere” and “guiding beings” [both are underlined], because when
thinking recognizes itself as semblance, it must feel itself as revering. And
we sense our etheric being as our guide from the earth out to the all-encompassing
cosmos. Only then, my dear friends, having departed from the physical world,
which we are accustomed to regard as robust, strong and rough, do we find the
way to the finer, more intimate etheric realm. If we wish to transfer these
thoughts from their crude physical existence, where they are dead, to an
existence which is finer, where they are alive, we must choose the intonation
for such a mantra which begins every line with a stressed beat,
followed by an unstressed beat, that is, a trochaic meter. We must be clear, my
dear friends, that what we express with words at first only touches the spirit
at the threshold. Words, as we use them today in civilization, have become so
physical that they are like bodies. Only when we feel that words become rhythmic,
just as in humans matter becomes rhythmic in the circulation of blood and
breathing, do we sense words carrying us up into the spiritual world. So that
we feel the blood circulation of the spirit in us when we make such a forceful
mantric verse alive, and we feel its rhythm carrying us into the spiritual
world just as we feel our own lives carried by our blood's circulatory rhythm.
The thought-admonition that the guardian of the Threshold speaks to humanity must be trochaic.

[The word
“trochaic” is written alongside the first verse of the mantra; the trochaic
rhythm is noted at the beginning of all seven lines while the verse is spoken
with the corresponding emphasis.]

See in yourself the weaving thoughts:

Cosmic semblances confront you,

Selfhood as such hides from you;

Plunge beneath the semblances:

Etheric essence flows in you;

Selfhood as such should revere the

Guiding beings of your
spirit.

Feeling in this way again and again, so that
one can forget everything else in earthly life and can live only in this
context and rhythm, carries the normal human thinking from out of the physical
world and above to the etheric world. Added to all other meditations, my dear
sisters and brothers, if you practice this verse now and then, or as often as
you like, it can raise you out of your thinking and into the spiritual world.

When we pass from human thinking to human
feeling things are quite different. Thinking is pure semblance, a true corpse,
dead; it was alive before we descended to the physical world. Feeling on the
other hand is like dreaming. Feelings are not more intense than dreams. The
feeling person dreams, but in his dreaming there is something of reality;
semblance and reality mix together in human feeling.

But we also feel that we don't want to
submerge in this reality which begins in us as feeling. We always prefer to
retain the semblance of thinking which exists in the physical world. In this
way we never reach true being, reality. We must have the courage to plunge into
the semblance of reality. We must have the courage to completely enter our
feeling, the innermost element of our soul, and then the semblance to which our
thinking is accustomed will reveal something of the reality. Then we will
perceive the cosmic forces, which otherwise are everywhere outside, beginning
to appear within us.

Then we should begin to be adroit in our
feeling, we should begin to be attentive in our feeling – just as we began to
revere when we wanted the semblance of thinking to rise to its true being. Then
we come upon the living forces of being within us.

This is the second, the feeling-admonition,
which the Guardian of the Threshold offers us:

Perceive within the flow of feeling:

when semblance and being within you blend,

Your selfhood tends towards resemblance;

So plunge into the semblance of being:

In you the cosmic-psychic forces;

Your selfhood then should ponder well

Your own soul's living powers.

That is the second admonition, the admonition
toward orientation of feeling: the second one which comes from the earnest
Guardian:

[The second verse is
written on the blackboard.]

Perceive within the flow of feeling:

when semblance and being within you blend,

Your selfhood tends towards resemblance;

So plunge into the semblance of being:

In you the cosmic-psychic forces;

Your selfhood then should ponder well

Your own soul's living powers.

And then if we want to pass, by feeling, from
semblance to reality, we must leave the etheric realm and enter the astral
realm. For this we must exert a special force, like the one we need when
climbing a mountain that grows continually steeper. Therefore the meaning of
the words, by unfolding rhythmically, takes on a growing force. The Guardian's
words of admonition relating to the experience of feeling must be iambic. And
indeed they are iambic:

[The word “iambic” is written alongside the
second verse. At the beginning of each line the iambic rhythm signs are written
and spoken with the corresponding intonation.]

Perceive within the flow of feeling:

when semblance and being within you blend,

Your selfhood tends towards resemblance;

So plunge into the semblance of being:

In you the cosmic-psychic forces;

Your selfhood then should ponder well

Your own soul's living powers.

We should feel the rhythm in such a vivid way
that the meaning of the words live within us, then we immerse ourselves
correctly in feeling and stride further on the path to the spiritual world. For
the mere meaning of the words cannot do it alone; we must bring our soul to a
perception, to a feeling for the rhythm in the mantric words:

Perceive within the flow of feeling:

when semblance and being within you blend,

Your selfhood tends towards resemblance;

So plunge into the semblance of being:

In you the cosmic-psychic forces;

Your selfhood then should ponder well

Your own soul's living powers.

We immerse ourselves still deeper from
semblance to true being, to true cosmic reality when we descend to the Will.
But there, in order to take the right path, we must listen to the Guardian's
words that he speaks on the Threshold. The Will is the strongest force in the
human soul also here on earth. But we don't feel it if we only experience the
will as though asleep. We are awake, really awake, only in thinking; in feeling
we are dreaming; in willing we are sleeping.

We must repeatedly consider how we make a
decision – how it is first a thought and then we see it again being carried
out. What happens in between, the transition to Will, is as unknown to ordinary
consciousness as what we experience spiritually between falling asleep and
waking. As feeling is immersed in dreams, the Will is immersed in sleep. But in
this willing we sleep through the reality of existence. We must become more and
more able to retrieve what we experience when sleeping, and we must become able
to retrieve from the Will what we experience from it.

That is the Guardian's third admonition, about
the Will, so that we can find the right paths into the spiritual world. Then,
if we are able to observe this admonition, we become filled with the spirit
within us.

Yes, my dear sisters and brothers, we
experience that we have blood flowing in us, that we are sated by food, that we
have thoughts that are illusions, and dream-feelings. But in ordinary
consciousness we are unaware of the spirit flowing through us like our blood.
If we attend to what the Guardian tells us as the third admonition, then we can
be aware of the Will in us, then we can experience how the spirit rules in us.
When I raise my hand or my arm, I have willed it. What has happened? Substance
has burned in me, a living combustion process has taken place in the act of
willing. Normally this stays in the unconscious. Every time a willed decision
takes place in our own bodies, a living burning process occurs. The chemists
and the physicists speak of a process of combustion. But just as the human body
is not a mineral, but a living thing interspersed by spirit, it is no common
fire in the human body, but a living fire interspersed with spirit. It is not a
fire like the flame we see on a candle, no combining of carbon and oxygen.
Just as the human being is ensouled, so are all the processes in him ensouled.
Whoever talks about the processes within man as he does about the exterior
process in nature doesn't know what he's talking about. For no natural process
extends to within the human being: each one is different within the human
being. Nature is not inside human skin; a metamorphosis of nature is inside
human skin, the spiritualization of nature. Nothing stays within us as it is in
exterior nature. We couldn't live for even a moment if anything were to stay as
it is in exterior nature.

In order to describe the Will, we must use an
image for it to become a living imagination for us. We walk. Walking
is one of the commonest activities of everyday life, although the world's
greatest puzzles are manifest when one takes even a single step. Imagine: the
person walks, the arms move while walking and fire streams out of him.

When we observe
ourselves as living beings becoming flame, we find the connection to what a
willing being truly is. We will find ourselves if we have the courage to
imaginatively conceive of ourselves as fiery, flaming, beings of Will. Then we
will be seized by the creative forces of the universe, will leave our self
within our skin and expand our self to the cosmic-self so that we can be human
beings and feel ourselves at one with the entire universe as willing beings.
But we must learn to become a flame of will in the cosmic fire. Fire in fire.

The Guardian of the
Threshold speaks of this. And he speaks of a thrust of will, because the will
thrusts within the reality of being.

Let strive in you with thrust of will:

Which rises out of semblance-being

With creative self it rises up;

Convert your life in full to this

With cosmic-spirit-force it's filled;

Your inner self should truly grasp

Creative cosmic force in the spirit-I.

These are the words,
innerly felt, which guide our will into the spiritual world.

[The third verse is
written on the blackboard.]

Let strive in you with thrust of will:

Which rises out of semblance-being

With creative self it rises up;

Convert your life in full to this

With cosmic-spirit-force it's filled;

Your inner self should truly grasp

Creative cosmic force in the spirit-I.

In ascending from thinking to its reality, we
have to develop reverence; if we want to ascend from appearance to reality
through feeling, we have to develop careful thinking – here in the first mantra
“revere” for thinking and “ponder” well for feeling. Now here [in the third
mantra] we have “grasp”. Grasp, that is closer, more within, is here in the
third verse for the will. We have further escalations in these
phrases:

“Guiding beings” for thinking;

“Your own soul's living powers” for feeling;

“Creative cosmic force” is for the will.

This is the escalation. [The words “Guiding
beings”, “Your own soul's living powers”, and “Creative cosmic force” are
underlined.]

But, as I said: fire in fire, reality that
merges with the reality of the universe itself: that is where the Guardian of
the Threshold is pointing. We must be more closely within this than during the
descent in thinking, where we descended from the crude, robust semblance to intimate
reality, where it was trochaic: stressed, unstressed; in feeling, where we had
to climb up as on a mountain, where it is iambic: unstressed, stressed; here in
the will it's again different: spondaic – stressed on stressed.

[The word “spondaic” is written next to the
third stanza, the spondaic rhythm sign is entered and spoken correspondingly.]

Let strive in you with thrust of will:

Rise out of semblance-being

With creative self it rises up;

Convert your life in full to this

With cosmic-spirit-force it's filled;

Your inner self should truly grasp,

World creative force in the Spirit-I.

Lass walten in dir den Willens-Stoss:

Der steigt aus allem Scheineswesen

Mit Eigensein erschaffend auf;

Ihm wende zu all dein Leben:

Der ist erfüllt von Welten.Geistes-macht;

Dein Eigensein, es soll ergeifen

Weltschöfermacht im Geistes-Ich.

The stressed sounds in the two first syllables
of each line should be felt rhythmically. We should gain firmness when the
Guardian directs the third admonition to us.

We should be aware, my dear sisters and
brothers, how the words of the Guardian lead us to knowledge. First these words
made us aware of how our thinking, feeling and willing have the images of the
three beasts in them; then the Guardian of the Threshold leads us further to
how we can strengthen this thinking, strengthen this feeling, strengthen this
willing so that they can overcome the three beasts, rise above the three
beasts, in order for the soul to “grow wings” as it was called in the previous
lesson and fly over to the spiritual world.

Therefore, after the three beasts have stood
before us, the Guardian of the Threshold tells us in the previous lesson:

Only when you've defeated the three

Will wings sprout upon your soul

To fly the abyss over,

Which separates you from the knowledge fields

To which your heart desires

To consecrate itself in healing.

But at the same time the Guardian gives us the
last mantra – which I will now pass on – what we should do to strengthen
ourselves in order that the wings to knowledge might grow.

Include in your meditation, my sisters and
brothers, what is given in these three mantras. It is what the classes which have been introduced since the Christmas Conference should lead to, so that esoteric knowledge may flow through the anthroposophical movement. Include this admonition in your meditation from the Guardian of the Threshold. It is not I who is
speaking to you; I am speaking to you for the Guardian of the Threshold, who
wishes to speak these words to you through me. For this School is an
institution of the spiritual world itself.

Therefore let us take these words as those of
the Guardian of the Threshold. Then they will be strengthening and encouraging
words after the shattering impression of the previous lesson. In contrast we
now have the prospect of strenghtening the soul. The person must first be
beaten down by what he experiences in the sensory world in order to rise up
strong in the spiritual world, so that he grows wings to fly over the abyss
from which light pours from out of the abyss, from out of the darkness born of
humanity.

Therefore the Guardian of the Threshold speaks
these words in order that we may again arise from the shattered debris:

See in yourself the weaving thoughts:

Cosmic semblances confront you,

Selfhood as such hides from you;

Plunge beneath the semblances:

Etheric essence flows in you;

Selfhood as such should revere the

Guiding beings of your
spirit.

Perceive within the flow of feeling:

when semblance and being within you blend,

Your selfhood tends towards resemblance;

So plunge into the semblance of being:

In you the cosmic-psychic forces;

Your selfhood then should ponder well

Your own soul's living powers.

Let strive in you with thrust of will:

Rise out of semblance-being

With creative self it rises up;

Convert your life in full to this

With cosmic-spirit-force it's filled;

Your inner self should truly grasp,

World creative force
in the Spirit-I.

And by having spoken these words, he returns,
following the rhythm, to those words with which he gave us a perspective of
what we are to achieve, what shines from the spiritual world on the other side
of the Threshold: